Genre Savvy

Edit Locked

Angela Moore: This doesn't make any sense. Shawn Hunter: It does if you've seen as many horror movies as I have. This is classic. The locked door, the scary janitor, the bloody warning and... our soon to be first victim. [everyone looks at Kenny]Kenny: Me? Why me? Cory Matthews: Well Kenny, it's certainly not going to be any of us!

The exact opposite of Genre Blindness. A Genre Savvy character doesn't necessarily know they're in a story, but they do know of stories like their own and what worked in them and what didn't. More sophisticated versions will also know they can't tell which genre they are in (and are often in far more realistic or complicated genres than the stories they remember), or which characters they are.

They will often try to take advantage of tropes, either to fail embarrassingly (often because they're actually Wrong Genre Savvy), or to achieve remarkable feats to everyone else's astonishment. The sophisticated savvy can realize that they do not know what characters they are playing, or whether they are exactly in the same genre as the books they read. If they are very good at taking advantage of tropes, they may evolve into Combat Pragmatist and fight by their own rules.

The most extreme, who know what Genre Blindness is and that they're supposed to be, remain Contractually Genre Blind. On the other hand, when they're incorrect in their assumptions on what they're supposed to be, they're of the Wrong Genre Savvy persuasion. Clever characters can be well aware of the possibility of Wrong Genre Savvy and additionally that they may not realize what roles they are cast in, and launch many a quip and discussion about whether a certain trope is or is not in play.

While Genre Savvy can be used to add spice to a tired old plot and create self-aware, intelligent characters, it's not always the right thing to do. A character who is too Genre Savvy can risk puncturing their story and turning it into a joke, which is a bit of a problem if it's supposed to be taken seriously. Furthermore, it can also ruin drama and suspense. Some genres require a certain amount of the Rule of Drama and Genre Blindness to effectively function, and in these cases the reader is always going to be asked to embrace the Anthropic Principle and Willing Suspension of Disbelief to some degree in order to accept the premise of the story. Otherwise, if a character knows exactly what type of story they're in and what to do to get out of their story in a quick, easy and painless fashion, they're going to do it, and consequently lead an easy, trouble-free life, and... why are we watching them again?

Furthermore, characters who are tooGenre Savvy can be just as unrealistic and unbelievable as characters who are too Genre Blind, which can also damage the story. After all, in the real world, people don't often live their lives as if everything they do conforms to a series of overarching narrative conventions, so why would fictional characters? While the Incurable Cough of Death may spell doom in fiction, nine out of ten times in the real world it suggests nothing more than a harmless cold, so it's not entirely unreasonable that a fictional character might initially see nothing to worry about either. The more sophisticated works frequently balance a good sense of Genre Savvy with as many references to how this story differs from the ones the reader may have read, just to keep everyone on their toes.

When a person becomes too Genre Savvy for their own good and off themselves, see Death by Genre Savviness. When a person prepares for every unlikely trope before it happens, they are Crazy-Prepared. If a character uses his Genre Savviness just to make humorous observations, he's a Meta Guy. When characters are not consciously Genre Savvy but regularly act within the limitations of the genre they're in anyway, they are Functional Genre Savvy. Compare with Medium Awareness where the character knows what medium they are in.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy